


Conrad

by toomuchagain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchagain/pseuds/toomuchagain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Cas struggle to find Dean, but it's really just too late for Cas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conrad

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Conrad" by Jets to Brazil. The song is about suicide (be forewarned before listening/reading the lyrics). While Cas doesn't commit suicide per se, please note that this was written after the Season 9 finale, as well as the Major Character Death warning before proceeding.

Castiel is not doing well when he arrives at the bunker.

It only takes Sam one broken prayer to get him there, which he would count as a record if not for the fact that that prayer is about Dean and his troubling disappearance. He's surprised it takes as long as it does, really.

At first, Sam doesn't realize anything's wrong. Cas explains the situation in Heaven, how they've agreed to not interfere with matters down here unless it involves angels, and Sam barely spares a thought for how Cas is apparently exempt from that. 

Dean's room stinks of sulfur, and they both conclude that Crowley must have had a hand in this. This time when they attempt to summon him, they do it properly, with the power of an angel behind it and a devil's trap painted in rough slashes of Old Enochian.

Crowley doesn't show.

A week later they find out why: Crowley is dead. Gutted like a fish by the Son of Murder, as the crossroads demon they trap so charmingly calls him. They don't need to cut it out of the demon to confirm that yes, he means Dean Winchester, but they do anyway, and send the bastard into sparking oblivion afterward.

Sam needs some time to process after that, and he leaves Cas to deal with the cleanup while he takes a walk.

It's when he returns to find Cas looking shaky and exhausted in the front seat of the impala, watching the demon burn with glassy eyes, that Sam first starts to realize that his friend is much worse off than he'd let on.

But even then, Cas shrugs off his worry and assures him he'll be fine. And it doesn't take that much to distract Sam—just a question of their next step in finding Dean.

They try summoning him.

They try hunting him.

They try good old-fashioned, illegal, law enforcement tracking.

Dean stays firmly out of their grasp.

Cas gets weaker.

His body starts developing sores—like the ones covering Nick's hide, or Jimmy's, back when Cas ate all those souls. Cas can't heal them, and what's worse, his body can't either. They leak, suppurating constantly, so that Cas tries to cover them in gauze and tape, and just ends up with sticky-wet bandages that he has to replace every hour or two.

And through it all he insists that they continue looking for Dean.

Sometimes, late, late at night, once Cas has passed out in an exhausted stupor, sprawled out in the library with some news report or text that might help cure a goddamn Knight of Hell, Sam goes down to the modest gym the MoL installed, and he beats the fuck out of one of the punching bags, alternately imagining Dean's and Cas's faces.

It's months later and Sam has nearly given up hope on the Dean front, but Cas...Cas won't give it up. He's barely hanging on by a thread, but he insists that they'll need to know how to help Dean when they find him, and he is adamant that they continue to look for Dean, even though Sam's brother has made it clear by now that he does not want to be found.

Cas's hands tremble endlessly, both turning pages and resting beside his research. He's become very proficient with computers, but his palsy makes it impossible to navigate one without a ton of errors or assistance.

He just won't give up.

One night, watching him cough up more blood and struggle to turn a single page, his eyes glowing just a little too unnaturally blue, Sam grits his teeth and leaves the bunker.

Sam doesn't stop for half an hour, needing for some ridiculous reason to put distance between him and Cas, like Cas might somehow manage to stumble five feet on his own, much less up the bunker stairs and out into the night.

He dials an old, deeply familiar number—the one number Dean's never, regardless of phone changes, abandoned.

It's all he can do to pray now that Dean will bother listening to his message.

"Hey Dean. I don't even know if you have this phone anymore, but I, uh. Dean, look, I'm not even really asking you to come back, okay? You're running and it's clear you're running for a reason. But I hear you don't care much for Hell, and I, uh. Damnit. Dean, it's Cas, okay? I just—"

Sam swallows and takes the phone from his ear to stare at it.

The message runs out of time and Sam redials.

"Dean, whatever crap you're thinking right now, I need you to stow it.

"Cas is dying. I—I think." Another thick swallow, as he wipes away the beginnings of wetness around his eyes. "I think he's got maybe days, if not hours."

It takes more wasted message time before Sam can finally grit out the words, "I can see more Grace bleeding out of him every day. It's constant now. There's nothing I can do, Dean. So just. I need you to get back here, okay? I know you don't do feelings and crap, but Dean, Cas is gonna die. And the only thing he's going to be thinking about when he does is you. So just—" the voicemail beeps that this message is too full and cuts off.

Sam stands there for a long moment before shutting off the screen and trekking back to the bunker.

\--------------------

Sam isn't wrong. He burns an empty pile of saplings because when Cas goes—when Cas's Grace gives out—he goes all at once in an agonizing blaze that leaves nothing behind.

Months later, when Dean finally tracks him down, Sam just hands him the key to the bunker and walks away. The scorch marks are still there, engulfing Dean's room.

He hopes Dean can hear Cas's throat-gutting screams when he goes inside.


End file.
